Adaptive streaming, e.g. adaptive bitrate streaming, involves adjusting a media stream in real time based on factors such as a user's bandwidth, CPU capacity, etc. Stream variations may have different bitrates, different audio codecs, resolutions, or the like, or combinations thereof.
Adaptive streaming is sometimes used to provide content live over the Internet. With live streaming, if a user joins a live video stream after a start time of the live video stream, the user's player may start playing the video at the current play time. If the user wishes to watch the video from the beginning, the user may drag a scrub bar to a position corresponding to the beginning.
Dragging the scrub bar may be an inconvenience, or worse, could spoil the experience of watching the video from the beginning (for example a user may see or hear a current score in a sporting event before the changes by dragging the scrub bar are complete, which could ruin the experience of watching the sporting event from the beginning). A known solution is to create more than one streaming media, for example, a first live streaming media and a second streaming media corresponding to the previously streamed portion of the content.